Photo courtesy of the United States Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program office.

I’m a Minnesota Public Radio member, and so I choose to receive a magazine called Minnesota Monthly as my thank you gift (I know I could save them $15 more a year but it’s a really good magazine). This month, I was at first pleased to find an article on global warming, then disturbed to learn about the rapid changes going on in Lake Superior because of the steadily increasing temperatures.

For starters, the lake’s rapidly warming water temperature has baffled scientists. Although they knew it has been slowly heating up, "it went bananas" beginning 30 years ago: about 75 percent of the 6-degree increase in water temperature has happened since 1980.

Scientists at the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth, MN thought they had made a mistake: How could the lake be warming up twice as fast as the climate around it?

Much like the effect scientists are seeing in the Arctic, the lack of ice coverage has caused the lake to warm up faster than expected. The ice normally reflects sunlight back into space and keeps the water cooler underneath. But as warmer temperatures creep in and the average annual ice cover shrinks, the darker open water absorbs the heat and cranks up the lake temperature even faster. The vicious cycle continues, as warmer water temperatures mean less ice, which means more open water…

The spring turnover is also happening much earlier than normal. The turnover happens when the icy surface water warms up and mixes with the rest of the lake, creating a layer of warm water on top. This has been happening 10-14 days earlier than it was 25 years ago.

Last summer, Lake Superior’s temperature broke a record when it was measured at 75 degrees. Typically, it barely got above 60.

So what does this mean for the rest of us? In the states surrounding Lake Superior and the other Great Lakes, rapidly increasing temperatures mean more invasive plant and animal species from the warmer climes. Lake Michigan has already seen sea lampreys almost wipe out its lake trout. Changes to wildlife would also hurt tourism, causing a major economic blow.

It also means big disruptions to the region’s commerce. Lake Superior is at its lowest water level in 81 years, and while scientists say global warming may not be the sole cause of that decline, it is a factor. Cargo ships — some that carry wind turbine parts over from Europe, ironically — must haul lighter loads so they don’t get stranded in port. That means less efficient shipping and transportation of goods around the world.

While landscapes and habitat have changed over the centuries, the swiftness of this latest change has unsettled scientists. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to prepare to adapt to the inevitable changes have begun and take meaningful action to ensure that it doesn’t get worse.

Minnesota Monthly

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the true-life chronicle of author Barbara Kingsolver’s decision to move to an Appalachian farm and eat locally produced, organic goods for one year. She explains that her highest shopping goal was to “get our food from so close to home that we’d know the person who grew it.” Her husband and two daughters joined her on this journey.

The family raised an astonishing array of vegetables, fruit, meat, and eggs. They did buy supplies like flour, coffee, and olive oil from the grocery store, but they were able to grow the vast majority of their food at home or buy from locals. Besides Kingsolver’s accounts of the ups and downs of pulling weeds or dodging testosterone-crazy roosters, husband Steven L. Hopp provides fascinating food facts sprinkled throughout the book. He explains that if we all ate just one meal each week made of locally raised organic meat and produce, we could reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil per week. Kingsolver’s nineteen-year-old daughter Camille offers sidebars of meal plans and recipes (my looming zucchinis thank her for the zucchini chocolate chip cookie recipe).

Steven and Camille’s practical commentary provide a good balance to the author’s more subjective arguments for eating seasonally. For example, Kingsolver implies that the reader will have a greater appreciation for food if they can’t eat apples in January, or that hours spent in the kitchen canning vegetables with the family is a happy time that brings you closer. It sounds great to me, but other readers may be swayed less by a touch-feely argument, and more convinced by the scientific health arguments for organic foods and the greater energy independence local foods bring (a typical meal travels 1500 miles to a dinner table). At times, I did get a bit tired of seeing Kingsolver’s world though the rosiest of glasses. Everything appears to be perfect, lush, beautiful, the most delicious, faster, stronger, healthier. I don’t doubt the superior taste and nutrition of locally grown, organic products, but I was waiting for another side to the story – some sort of significant downside or obstacle they had to overcome. The author admits this herself when she recounts telling a friend about a tranquil summer evening spent with Amish friends on a farm. The friend remarks, “What, not even a mosquito to bother heaven?” But perhaps Kingsolver’s point is that it is easier than we think to eat locally. In spite of the endless positive spin, her humor and thorough research were inspiring enough to get me to contemplate making my own mozzarella.

A thought-provoking surprise was Kingsolver’s adamant argument for eating meat – specifically locally bred, organic meat. She aligns herself with a vegetarian position, she says, except that she eats meat. She points out that “every sack of flour and every soybean-based block of tofu came from a field where countless winged and furry lives were extinguished in the plowing, cultivating, and harvest…To believe that we can live without taking life is delusional.” She goes on to explain that the oft-repeated argument that it takes ten times as much land to make a pound of meat as a pound of grain only applies to the kind of land where rain falls abundantly on rich topsoil. Cultures that live on less productive land like the Navajo, Mongols, Lapps, and Masai would starve without their animals. The argument for eating locally produced organic meat is perhaps a more realistic option for individuals who care about where their food comes from and its environmental and energy consequences, but who aren’t going to stop eating chicken or burgers tomorrow.

In the end, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has a little bit for everyone. For those ready to set the loftiest goals, take the Kingsolver challenge of canning all fall and making meals from home seven days a week. For someone like me who has a love of food, gardening, and cooking, but who isn’t prepared to give up Cheerios (are they local if General Mills is located 20 miles from my house?), I walked away with a renewed dedication to my farmers’ market, an intensive search for local foods at my grocery store, and the knowledge that buying food that grew up continents away is as much of an energy decision as leaving the lights on.

Last week, Minnesota’s Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty signed into law landmark global warming and energy efficiency legislation.

The bills include a requirement for an economy-wide climate change action plan to be submitted to the state legislature by February 1, 2008. The plan must provide a roadmap to cut emissions 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. A Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group was recently created by Pawlenty and charged with developing and presenting this plan to lawmakers.

In addition, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is directed to estimate and factor in the costs of future federal CO2 regulation (for example, a carbon tax) when it examines proposals for a new power supply.

Energy efficiency – the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to cut emissions – finally got its due with a law that calls for increasing efficiency 25 percent by 2025. Pilot projects are planned that encourage energy savings without loss of revenues for utilities (i.e. a “decoupling” strategy that aims to make a utility indifferent to selling less energy because of restructured rates). In a news release from Clean Energy Minnesota, Sheldon Strom of the Center for Energy and Environment pointed out:

“We’ll reach Minnesota’s global warming goals in large part through saving, rather than consuming, those kilowatts of electricity or therms of natural gas…It is the most consumer-friendly way to fight global warming.”

Michael Noble, Executive Director of the nonprofit energy policy organization Fresh Energy, explained to me why it’s important for states to take action on a global problem:

“With the U.S. on the sidelines, global action on the climate warming problem is stalled. To get the U.S. government moving, innovation must percolate up from the states. State action on global warming is reaching a tipping point, and major changes seem increasingly inevitable. Minnesota is the latest example of states setting the bar higher.”

This global warming and efficiency legislation wraps up a banner year for Minnesotans. Earlier this spring, lawmakers also passed and Governor Pawlenty signed a Renewable Energy Standard requiring 25 percent of the state’s energy to come from renewables sources by 2020.

Clean Energy Minnesota
Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group
Wikipedia

Courtesy of WillSteger.com

Will Steger, famed polar explorer whose feats include the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole without re-supply, the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history (1,600 mile south-north traverse of Greenland), and the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica, is now on a new mission. He is an eyewitness to the impacts of global warming, both in the Polar Regions and in his home state of Minnesota. A former science teacher, he has set out to educate people on global warming and the solutions needed to slow it. He returned last week from a four-month trek by dogsled across Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic to interview the Inuit people, who have had to adapt quickly to a new lifestyle because of climate change. Steger will use these interviews to produce a documentary later this year.

I spoke with Will by phone on May 15th. He was in Iglulik, Nunavut; the last stop of his expedition.

Green Options: You’ve traveled both Polar Regions extensively and have documented how climate change is drastically changing their landscapes. What was different about this trip?

Will Steger: This was a new route for me because this was a cultural expedition. We specifically planned the route so we could visit as many villages and talk with as many people along the way as possible. We know global warming is happening and we want to put a human face on it. So we spent a lot of time in villages. Our team included myself, three team members, and three 50- or 60-year-old Inuit hunters. We talked with hundreds of people.

Baffin Island, where I traveled, is like ground zero of global warming because there’s an intact culture that relies very heavily on their surroundings to survive. Changes are noticed almost immediately. Up here, global warming is showing itself most drastically out on the sea ice. As the earth warms, 80 percent of that energy goes into the ocean, which then affects the ice cover. The Inuit are seeing the ice freeze six weeks later, along with earlier break ups of the ice. Generally, the Inuit have had about 8 months where they are able to travel on the ice to hunt, and now that’s cut down to 5 or 6 months. That’s a 25 percent reduction in the amount of time they have to hunt out on the ice, which acts like an extension of their land.

GO: Are the Inuit angry? It is industrialized countries’ pollution that has caused this.

WS: Everyone is talking about global warming up here, there’s no denial about it. But the Inuit are forgiving people. Many of them aren’t worried about it because they can’t change it, and they don’t worry about things they can’t change. They understand that the polluters are industrialized nations, but in general they don’t harbor a lot of anger. They wish we would change, but they’re pretty easy going.

But we still have to take responsibility. Our way of consuming energy is really causing this, and we need to change to avoid the worst of the consequences.

GO: You’ve documented the changes up there before; did anything surprise you about this trip?

WS: Let me first say that no single event “proves” global warming. Global warming is an accumulation of changes happening over time. That said, I did see an effect that really surprised me, and everyone up there was talking about it: There is a large sound called Cumberland Sound. It’s about 50 miles wide and 125 miles long, and we were going to cross it on this expedition. But the ice broke up from the swells from a super storm in the North Atlantic. Everyone was talking about that. So we had to go around it, which was an extra 75 miles. That’s not a major hardship for the team, but it is for the Inuit communities because they depend on the sound for commercial fishing. Now it has shattered the fishing industry. It isn't just abou the environment; it’s the fact that it affects the economy and survival of this entire community.

Another impact really struck me. There’s a place up here they call the “land where ice never melts.” Well, it is melting. The glaciers are shrinking. That was incredibly powerful to see.

GO: Seeing all these impacts from climate change, was this trip depressing or invigorating?

WS: Neither. It was reaffirming: We were ground-truthing the science.

You have to understand that this Inuit culture does not think the way we do. Their world is close to the land. They talk in minute details of the changes in the salt in the sea ice, details that aren’t even in the climate change models. You rely on a lot of satellite info up here, but there aren’t a lot of scientists.

GO: How do the Inuit talk about global warming?

WS: Many of the elders will say the earth’s axis has changed because the sun is rising in a different place. But what’s really happening is that, because our warming planet causes more water to be absorbed up into the atmosphere, they are seeing a diffraction of the sun. It’s like an optical illusion caused by global warming. They also say that the sky color has changed: it’s now a whitish blue in the winter rather than a deep blue. In the wintertime up here, the sun doesn’t rise. But now the Inuit say the light is getting brighter in the winter. Again, the water vapor is diffracting the light in the atmosphere, making it seem lighter.

GO: What are your next steps after you return to the States?

WS: We have a lot of film from our expedition up here. We’ll be heading out to Los Angeles to start producing the documentary. In the summer, we’ll be back up to Baffin Island to do more interviews with the elders.

I’m also back on the global warming campaign trail in November, along with Fresh Energy, an energy policy organization with which I partner. We’ll be educating folks on solutions, specifically speaking a lot with congregations in the faith community.

Governor Tim Pawlenty appointed me to sit on Minnesota’s Climate Change Advisory Group. I’m working with about 50 other people from industry, environmental groups, local and tribal governments, transportation, and agriculture to develop a climate change action plan for the state.

I’ll also be working more with high school students, which I’m very excited about. They must feel empowered to fight this. They’re not taking on the challenge yet, but I think it’s going to happen soon, and I want to be part of it. I want to do now what we did 30 years ago during the Vietnam War; create a movement with young people. That’s when we’re going to see real change.

Cross posted at Maria Energia 

A seemingly simple alteration a wind turbine blade’s traditional shape could result in huge improvements in efficiency.

WhalePower Corporation out of Toronto, Canada has designed a turbine blade with rounded, teeth-like bumps along the leading edge. The company’s name is a nod to the humpback whale, whose flipper was the inspiration for the design.

The agility of the humpback whale is astonishing, given that they can be over 50 feet long, weigh nearly 80,000 pounds, yet move quickly and tightly in the water. One of the animal's advantages, according to scientists, is the unique row of bumps or “tubercles” along the leading edge of their flippers that dramatically increase the whale’s aerodynamic efficiency. Specifically, researchers found a 32 percent lower drag and 8 percent improvement in lift from a flipper with a serrated edge compared to a smooth one.

Businessman Stephen Dewar heard about the humpback research and contacted one of the scientists involved, Professor Frank Fish of West Chester University in Pennsylvania. After a few meetings, they enlisted the help of some local engineers and formed WhalePower, taking a cue from Mother Nature and modeling their blade design after the whale’s flipper.

WhalePower claims that their turbine design can capture more wind energy at much lower speeds than traditional designs. The channels created by the teeth at the blade's edge cause separate wind streams to accelerate across the surface of the blade in rotating flows. These “energy-packed” vortexes increase the lift force on the blade. For example, Dewar told the Toronto Star that this design produces the same power at 11 miles per hour that one would expect at 18 miles per hour. Furthermore, he claimed these channels prevent airflow from moving along the span of the blade and past the tip, which can create noise, instability and a loss of energy. By keeping the air flow nicely channeled, more wind is captured and noise is reduced.

Dewar sees this “biomimicry” design – the fusion of biology and engineering – reaching beyond wind power.

“’This changes the game,’ says Dewar, adding that any system using a fan or turbine could also benefit from the new design. This includes everything from better turbines for hydroelectric generation to residential ceiling fans that use less electricity. ‘If we've got what we think we've got, then the range of applications is staggering.’”

The Ontario Centres of Excellence and the Ontario Power Authority have contributed over $60,000 USD for early research and to encourage collaboration with a wind engineering group at the University of Western Ontario. The next and arguably most crucial step to commercial production is independent, third party verification of the blade’s performance.

Toronto Star
Wikipedia

Cross posted at Maria Energia

Glaciers are considered “global thermometers” and their shrinking numbers are watched closely by climate change scientists. Germany’s glaciers are suffering a faster fate than many, and locals dependent on the Zugspitze glacier for their livelihood are struggling to slow its demise.

In an area known for its winter skiing, and in a nation dependent on glaciers for drinking water, the melting of Germany’s last glacier is spurring some innovative – some say futile – attempts to save it. Giant anti-glare shields have been spread over the glacier each spring for the past 14 years, with tons of loose snow piled on top. The shields deflect the sun, keep the surface cool and shield the glacier from warm summer rain that speeds the melting. During the winter months, workers set off explosives to generate controlled avalanches on surrounding slopes to push snow onto the glacier and fences are erected to slow wind erosion. But the end is still inevitable, said the Zugspitze’s cable car operator, Frank Huber:

"We're doing all we can to preserve it as long as possible, but I'm not God and there's only so much we can do…the other things we're doing are only going to slow the process down a little bit. We aren't going to be able to save it….I grew up with the glacier and it's sad to think one day my children's children won't know what it feels or looks like.”

No one will say how much these efforts cost, other than that the investment is considerable.

Scientists report that rising global temperatures from climate change are causing the melting. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also stated that small alpine glaciers will disappear while larger glaciers will shrink 30-70 percent by 2050. The Zugspitze glacier was over 260 feet thick in 1910, compared with less than 150 feet thick today.

In the U.S.’s Glacier National Park, only 27 glaciers are left, down from 150 in 1850. Some estimates predict the park will be without glaciers by 2030.

CBS News
Reuters, via CNN

Yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its second report of the year on global warming. Back in February, the IPCC explained the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. This time, we learn the impacts.

For increases in global mean temperature of less than 1-3 degrees Celsius above 1990 levels, impacts may produce benefits in some places and some sectors, and produce costs in other places and sectors. However, some low latitude and polar regions of the world will see net costs rise even with only small increases in temperature. Once the average temperature increases more than 2-3 degrees Celsius in any region, however, it is “very likely” that we wil see declining benefits and instead see an increase in net costs.

The Summary for Policymakers of the Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability reports the projected effects of climate change:

• Costs and benefits of climate change for industry, settlement, and society will vary widely by location and scale. In the aggregate, however, net effects will tend to be more negative the larger the change in climate.

• Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid to high latitudes for local mean temperature increases of up to 1-3 degrees Celsius depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions.

• Studies in temperate areas have shown that climate change is projected to bring some benefits, such as fewer deaths from cold exposure. Overall it is expected that these benefits will be outweighed by the negative health effects of rising temperatures world-wide, especially in developing countries.

• Approximately 20-30 percent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius.

Each word of the report had to be agreed upon by consensus, but disputes between the scientific authors and diplomatic editors infuriated some scientists. They claim the predicted impacts have been watered down because of political interference. For example, a sentence that originally said scientists had “very high confidence” (greater than 90 percent) that many natural systems would be affected by rising temperatures was changed to “high confidence” (greater than 80 percent) at the insistence of delegates from China and Saudi Arabia.

The report goes on to say that global warming cannot be stopped at this point, only slowed down. However, the most catastrophic effects can still be avoided with swift and decisive global action. The IPCC recommends a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures:

Even the most stringent mitigation efforts cannot avoid further impacts of climate change in the next few decades, which makes adaptation essential, particularly in addressing near-term impacts. Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt.

This suggests the value of a portfolio or mix of strategies that includes mitigation, adaptation, technological development (to enhance both adaptation and mitigation) and research (on climate science, impacts, adaptation and mitigation).

The full report will be released next week. It includes more than 2,500 scientists appointed by more than 130 countries.

The IPCC was created by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to assess the scientific, technical, and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk for climate change, along with its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. Its assessments are based solely on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature.

CNN
Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability: Summary for Policymakers
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Photo credit: Tree-Nation Tree-Nation is an organization aiming to plant 8 million trees in Niger, Africa in the shape of a huge heart to combat deforestation and global warming. Folks who want to get involved can visit Tree-Nation's website and buy trees for themselves or gift them to others for milestones such as weddings, new babies, or even to advertise a business.

Purchasers of a tree are asked to plant it on a virtual map, and then a real tree will be planted in the same spot at the park in Niger. There are different types of trees to choose from, all local ones that have the attributes (like robust root systems) to survive in the desert, like the Acacia, Baobab, and various palm trees.

Once a tree is purchased, it gets its own “Tree-Blog” and profile. Visitors to the site and tree purchasers can socialize with each other by sharing photos, messages, links, etc. Andy Pothecary and Maxime Renaudin are the co-founders of Tree-Nation and are based in Barcleona, Spain. They work with a small team of community members in Niger, and hope that they community there will become a center for projects working towards a sustainable, healthy future. Pothecary told Green Options:

“Our members will share a common interest by planting a tree, an action in the real world, bridging cultural and geographical boundaries.”

Since the project launched late last year, nearly 700 trees have been planted, so Tree-Nation has quite a ways to go. But even if you don't want to buy a tree, the site is worth checking out just for the fantastic mapping technology.

Tree-Nation is affiliated with the United Nations Environment Programme's Billion Tree campaign, whose mission is to plant a billion trees worldwide by the end of 2007 to fight deforestation and raise awareness of global warming.

Tree-Nation

This post isn’t exactly related to my daily accounts of clean energy goings-on, but since I’ve been hunting since I was 12 (don’t ask about my record), it caught my eye.

The impacts of global warming are starting to hit home for a lot of us, and those out in nature see some of the earliest effects. In Culebra Creek, Colorado, locals are reporting very early run-off from the mountains. This means less water in the summer and fall, according to Jack Williams, a scientist with the conservation group Trout Unlimited. Fish like trout need cold water and become stressed on hot summer days. He told Reuters:

"We are finding a lot of concern among anglers and hunters about climate change. These people value traditions and their family and it will affect their children and their ability to enjoy these kinds of outdoor experiences.”

Goose hunting is another sport that’s been affected by a warmer climate. One guide on the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island estimated that hunters only bagged about 40 percent of the geese they normally get. Warmer temps allow the birds to stay longer in coastal areas that used to freeze up, and allow for an earlier grain harvest. That means there’s less food in the fields to attract the birds when the hunting season begins in the fall.

According to the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), more than 40 million Americans hunt or fish and they spend $70 billion a year on licenses, equipment, and supplies. That sort of participation and money, of course, leads to political influence. In fact, anglers and hunters played an important role in securing congressional protection from oil and gas drilling last year for the Valle Vidal area in New Mexico and the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana.

Eighty percent of anglers and hunters surveyed by the NWF said they believe the U.S. isn’t doing enough to fight global warming, especially our addiction to oil. Their lawmakers had better be listening. In particular, the Republican Party – which counts on sportsmen and women for a strong base of support - has often been reluctant to move decisively on global warming in the past. Anglers and hunters have a great opportunity to reel in their sluggish elected officials on this issue.

National Wildlife Federation
Reuters, via Planet Ark
targetglobalwarming.org

Image: Sports IllustratedThe guys and some gals may disagree with me on this one, but the cover for the hottest Sports Illustrated cover is…global warming.

Clearly, environmentalists aren’t the only ones talking about global warming anymore: it’s affecting ski resorts, insurance companies, and a host of cultural institutions like the wide world of sports: The Miami Dolphins have built a climate-controlled bubble to avoid the extreme Florida heat during practices, seven World Cup ski racing events in Europe have been cancelled this season because of warmer temperatures, and Alaska’s Iditarod dogsled race hasn’t started at its traditional location in five years because of lack of snow.

So what is the sport world’s part in fighting global warming? Make sure stadiums are easily accessible by mass transit and install renewable energy systems (solar or wind) on stadiums are a few ideas. But many professional organizations and athletes are taking action now:

• Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA has a water filtration and reuse system that collects and recirculates "black" and "gray water" to make the most of all that beer and all those flushes.

• Saints safety Steve Gleason runs his Dodge Ram pickup on biodiesel.

• The NFL planted 3,000 trees around Florida to try to offset Super Bowl XLI’s estimated one million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, a main contributor to global warming.

• NASCAR driver Ward Burton's foundation is pledged to habitat management, land conservation and environmental education in his home state of Virginia.

Ken Rakoz of Centralia, WA built the first biodiesel-powered dragster. He told Sports Illustrated:

"In the environmental movement there's way too much preaching to the choir. There are people sitting on the fence, and Joe Sixpack doesn't really know about [biodiesel] until we do something like racing."

As it impacts us all more and more, creative and meaningful action from all sectors of society will be critical to fighting it. There’s no wild card for the planet in the league of global warming.

Sports Illustrated